Josephus be excepted as an interpolation; and that this defect in the evidence is fatal to the historical claim.

The people called Jews, or Israelites, neither formed colony nor nation in that part of the earth which is now called Judea, or Holy Land, before the time of Alexander of Macedon, (336, B. C.); consequently all that is said of their dwelling in and going out of Egypt, their sojourn in the wilderness, their warfare with the Canaanites and Philistines, their occupation of that country, their subsequent conquest, captivity, and restoration, is entirely fiction or allegory.

I read it as political and moral instruction veiled in allegory; and as it is to be desired, that, in the removal of a system, all its defects be made apparent, so it becomes a desideratum that we account for the origin of the sects named Jews and Christians.

This may be done in two ways-one, that they were public philosophical sects; the other, that they were degrees of order in the ancient mysteries.- [The Church.

THE FREE ENQUIRER.

God is all that is, all that has been, all that will be. All is in him, all is by him, HE IS ALL. It shall no longer be said, then, that God has called forth the world out of nothing, that he has framed man after his own image, that he has created the light with a word, and launched the celestial bodies into space, or that he says to the sea; "Thus far shalt thou go and no further." But that great ocean itself, which breaks in thunder on the shore, then returns in the same thundering voice again; those celestial orbs which gravitate throughout space; that glorious light which floods as with its waves; man destined to love, to know and to act such wonders-ay! THE UNIVERSE ITSELF IS GOD-is the God whom we adore; who reveals himself to our bodies by his infinite body, the beauty of which enchants us; to our minds by his infinite mind, which shines forth in every ordered portion of his incomprehensible whole; and to our love by his infinite love, the living harmony between intelligence and matter![St. Simonian's Sermons.

27

CAUSE AND EFFECT. What is a cause? the term implies a relation it is that which is capable of producing something different from itself, which something is called an effect. This also is a relative term, it implies that which results from the operation of a cause.

What virtue is there in a cause which enables it to produce something different from itself? a question well urged: why truly there is none. If a cause could produce an effect which is different from itself, that in which the difference consists, if it be superadded to the cause, must originate from nonentity: which is contrary to our estab lished principle. If it be only a part of a cause, some properties having been abstracted, why then there is no act of production; for that only remains, and is the effect, which before was produced. A single cause is no agent, it is an identity, but capable of no transaction: for a thing cannot supply or confer what it does not possess ; all it can supply is itself, or its own identity. How then do effects comprise the cause, and still be something different from the cause?

As a single cause can produce nothing different from itself, and as the effect, according to the relative signification of the word, is more than the cause; and as this difference cannot originate out of nonentity; so the diffeference must on these accounts be supplied by something else. The effect then depends, not upon one, but upon more than one cause; and as all things are effects, there can be nothing simple and elementary, but all things must be produced by causes.

The causes which make an effect can supply nothing but themselves, nothing but that which pre-existed; the effect therefore is no new existence, but it is a new form; called new, from its having taken place at some known period. Surely, it will be said, an effect appears to be very different from its causes? It must be different from its individual causes, but is that which it is made by them all; the causes must be different individually from their effect, or the whole; and this, in some respects, is a gi gantic principle.

The mode by which a cause acts has nothing mystical in it, it is itself, and no more than itself, and it can do

no more than exist. But it may exist seperately, that is, as an effect dependent only upon its own causes. When it performs that which characterizes a cause, viz. when it produces an effect, it is by combining with something else.

In this combination there is no new production; both causes (or if they were a thousand it would be the same thing) are changed, so as to exist, still preserving every property which belongs to them, in another form. This other form is the effect which is thus conjointly produced. Causes do not lose their existence in changing their form: although in the effect the causes separately may not be recognized, they cannot lose their existence; the whole is a different combination, and of course possesses a double set of properties, which will individually have some share in determining its character. Every thing is liable to be considered as an effect: and all those things are liable to be considered as causes, which, from a relation between themselves and others, might change their form and produce effects.

EDWARD LYTTON BULWER.

It is in vain that they oppose OPINION; any thing else they may subdue. They may conquer wind, water, NATURE itself; but to the progress of that secret, subtile, pervading spirit, their imagination can devise, their strength can accomplish, no bar; its votaries they may seize, they may destroy; itself, they cannot touch. If they check it in one place, it invades them in another. They cannot build a wall across the whole earth; and even if they could, it would pass over its summit! Chains carnot bind it, for it is immaterial-nor dungeons enclose it, for it is universal. Over the faggot and the scaffold over the bleeding bodies which they pile against its path, it sweeps on with a noiseless, but unceasing march. Its camp is the universe; its asylum the bosoms of their own soldiers. Let them depopulate, destroy as they please, to each extremity of the earth; but as long as they have a single supporter themselves-as long as they leave a sin gle individual into whom that spirit can enter, so long they will have the same labors to encounter. [Falkland.

J. B. SMITH'S

JOHN B. SMITH'S

SPECULATIVE DICTIONARY.

In tracing the actions of the truly benevolent or humane to their motives, we discover that their happiness centres in the well-being of others; and hence such as justly merit the exalted appellation, will always be more or less unhappy whenever they behold others involved in trouble and misery. And should these sympathizing hearts once perceive that their pleasure is in the least degree produc tive of painful sensation to any portion of sensitive exis tence, it must instantly cease to be enjoyment to them; for true and practical benevolence cannot be limited to the human race, but will ever feel for all grades of the sen sitive Universe.

We have a strong proof of the delicate sensibility pos sessed by the skin of horses, and other hairy animals, in their evincing such high susceptibility of cutaneous irritation and torment from flies, and other species of the insectile tribes. Yet, in the face of this evidence, base and unreflecting mankind use the lash upon these delicately sensitive creatures, as if they were covered with hides analogous to the rind of a tree; and painfully knowing this fact, I wish there were a law, and a rigorous one too, that would teach the cruel wretches to reflect upon their actions towards dumb animals, by enforcing an equitable transfer of the weight of the scourge upon their own bare cuticle. Such a law would be strictly just and moral, and also productive of incalculable good; for there is no crime equal to that of cruelty.

There are bad atheists as well as bad Christians; and let it be remembered, that it is exclusively moral rectitude, and not firm adherence to religious rites that constitutes the goodness of character in a good Christian, any more than attachment to atheism makes a good atheist, but it is moral action that effects the good in each case; and hence, the study and practice of morality is all we need, in order to become exalted and righteous: for who can philosophically or justly say that the human species has any important duty to perform beyond those which genuine morality enjoins?

Laws are bad when their tendency is calculated to reduce sensible and mansuete persons to involuntary patients of gross and omnivorous tyranny. In a happy state of society, the grosser part of the species will always be the willing patients of those who are naturally sensible, delicate, judicious, and just, and also placid in the exercise of their authority. By unnatural laws we are bereaved of our innate rights and pleasures. By false morals and superstition we are denied even the claim to what ought to be our most sacred enjoyments, while hateful and injurious customs have partially annihilated the means of even tasting the sweets that would naturally flow from the prac tice of our innocent and lambent desires.

It would be a wise law which should allow a parent to put a period to the life of a monstrous or loathsome child; and such an act, when accomplished, would deserve to be deemed by society a benevolent one, not only as regards the human species, for the practice ought to be extended to all animals where happiness or comfort cannot possibly be within their reach if suffered to live.

In the descending scale of intelligent beings, Man, by Nature, is but a few shades above the next class: yet, by possessing this grade above the aggregate of organized nervous matter, human nature has the power or means, in the lapse of time, by a perpetual culture of its various sensibility, and by using the experience and intellectual store of innumerable generations, of raising its species to an indefinite degree of perfection and animal superiority, which ought ultimately to produce universal melioration. For man possesses three important faculties over and above other animals, or at least these in a greater degree: which faculties are-Imagination, the power of Abstract Reflection, and that of Speech; of course he can invent by the first, improve by the second, and widely commune by the last; thus neutralize many of his physical evils, also increase the number of his real comforts, far beyond what any of those animals can who are below him in intellectual power and mental capacity.

By prejudicial laws and baneful customs, a very large portion of the female sex is reduced to mental slavery; and this is a state now advocated by many of both sexes,